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On Jan. 7, 2009, Steven Good was working as a truck driver. He remembers it being a tough day, a heavy snowstorm the day before, the streets in the nation’s capital an absolute mess.

He was pulling up to a Chinese restaurant on Somerset St. when he got the phone call, looking at the delivery door and the ice-covered lane that led to it, wondering if he should chance it — the biggest worry in his life right then; if his truck was going to get stuck.

Then he answered his ringing phone. And was told his brother had just been killed in Afghanistan.

“I just dropped to my knees and started crying,” remembers Good. “I remember feeling guilty later, for actually thinking parking in that loading bay was some big problem.”

Brian Good was killed when his armoured vehicle drove over an improvised explosive device north of Kandahar.

Lately, I have found myself thinking about the men and women who died in Afghanistan. Thinking about their families, how they spent Christmas, and what they might be thinking today.

Just last week an Afghan warlord said the situation in Afghanistan is exactly the way it was one year before the Russians pulled out of the country, back in the ’80s.

“The fact is that the government has failed,” Gulbuddin Hekmatyar told the London Daily Telegraph. “The foreign forces have failed and the situation is worsening by the day. We might face a dreadful situation after 2014 which no one could have anticipated.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron was quick to dispute this assessment by one of the most wanted, and notorious, warlords in Afghanistan. I have no doubt that if Prime Minister Stephen Harper was asked his opinion of Gulbuddin’s interview, we would hear similar dismissive comments.

But for the families of the fallen, I suspect there is a chilling authenticity to the warlord’s words. A confirmation of their deepest fears and regrets.

I contacted Steven Good last week to get his take on the story, and after a lengthy pause he said:

“He’s probably right. I know a lot of Canadians don’t want to admit it. I know a lot of the troops don’t want to admit it, but what did we accomplish over there?

“For years we heard stories about building schools, and opening up highways, we were told that’s why we were in Afghanistan, that’s the good we were bringing to the country, but who believes any of those things will be there five years from now?

“I think the mission was a failure and most people just want to forget it ever happened.”

A tough pill to swallow, as they say, but I suspect Steven Good is right. The federal government certainly seems ready to forget the decade-long deployment to Afghanistan. (It can’t even agree on when, or where, to put a memorial to those who died.)

The media seems to have forgotten as well. It’s been a long time since I read a piece about troops in Afghanistan, even though we still have nearly a thousand deployed there on a training mission in Kabul.

The families will never forget. They don’t have that option. Every year there will be birthdays and holidays where the absence of a loved one will be the elephant in the room.

In time, they will stop wondering if the loss was worthwhile, if the Afghan mission accomplished its stated goals and their suffering was not in vain. At that point, their only solace will be in remembrance. In people who remember their sacrifice, and respect it, whatever happens next in Afghanistan.

Trooper Brian Good, by the way, had a wife and two young daughters. He joined the military late in life and was called “the old man” by the other soldiers in his unit, the Royal Canadian Dragoons.

He was stationed in Petawawa and loved being a soldier. Would write lengthy e-mails to his wife, going through every detail of his days in Kandahar. Would phone his brother to say: “You won’t believe what I’m doing right now.”

Brian Good died four years ago today. He was Canada’s 107th combat fatality in Afghanistan.

Slain Canadian soldier’s kin fears troops’ deaths were in vain

On Jan. 7, 2009, Steven Good was working as a truck driver. He remembers it being a tough day, a heavy snowstorm the day before, the streets in the nation’s capital an absolute mess.

He was pulling up to a Chinese restaurant on Somerset St. when he got the phone call, looking at the delivery door and the ice-covered lane that led to it, wondering if he should chance it — the biggest worry in his life right then; if his truck was going to get stuck.

Then he answered his ringing phone. And was told his brother had just been killed in Afghanistan.